On Writing Study Guides
Dec 18th, 2007 by Micah Tillman | 7 Comments |
The Wife and I have finished the two small group study guides.
(In churches nowadays it has become popular to organize the congregation into groups of 4 to 10 [roughly] who pick a place and day to meet outside of the normal church services and do things together. Usually these groups are called “small groups.”
One of the most common activities that small groups engage in is the time-honored book study. Everyone reads an agreed-upon section of the book each week, and they get together at the pre-ordained time to discuss.
Frequently a study guide is produced to accompany a book that might lend itself to this kind of activity, so as to provide stimulation and structure both to the individual who’s reading/pondering the book, and to the group who’s discussing it.)
The first is for Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-by-Numbers Christianity by Jim Palmer.
The second is for The Organic God by Margaret Feinberg.
The guides are currently in the hands of the design team at Relevant Media Group, who do fantastic work, IMO.
It’s really interesting to be handed (or rather, mailed) a book you’ve never read and told, “Write a study guide for this.” It’s really really interesting to be handed (or rather, mailed) two books you’ve never read and told, “Write a study guide for these.”
It’s really really really interesting to be mailed two books, asked to write study guides for them, informed that there is a looming deadline, and be in the middle of wrapping up your semester with two philosophy classes, grading papers, writing/grading final exams, lecturing, writing a dissertation, etc.
And by “interesting” I mean “exciting” and “scary.” Have you ever written a study guide before? Neither had we . . . .
(Well, I’ve essentially written and taught a several study guides for my philosophy students on philosophy books. But still.)
So we got the books and read them as fast as we could with highlighters and pens (deadlines loom quite effectively, as I’m sure you’ve noticed). Then we collected the authors’ thoughts and our thoughts and tried to find the structure, look for connections, etc. I love that. Books really come alive when you do that.
And then we wrote a ton of questions (of which we kept the best). That was the especially exciting part. I personally can’t wait to hear people’s answers to them. (Not that I ever will, unless I happen to be a member of a small group who is studying one or both books and using our study guides.)
And then we collected Scripture passages and movies and books (and even CDs and websites) to suggest for further reading/exploration/discussion. (The Wife is so much better at this part than I am, because it triggers my OCD. Yay teams!)
I’m so stoked about how they both turned out. The books themselves are fantastic. (Fortunately! I wonder what it would be like to have to write a study guide for a pathetic book.) The books, plus thoughts and questions and suggestions from The Tillmans, plus a group of people to discuss it all with will be phenomenal :-D
Not that people can’t come up with thoughts and questions on their own. I just think ours are particularly insightful and stimulating.
And no, I’m not engaging in either normal or Limbaughic Irony. I actually do think “the product” is pretty sweet.
I am allowed to say that, right? One doesn’t want to sound prideful, but one does want to share one’s excitement.
Hello again Micah.
Glad to see you aren’t dead.
Interesting stuff. I direct small groups for our church and I’ve been trying to work on ways to lighten the loads of my small group leaders… I don’t want them having to create their own bible studies from the ground up, etc… What I’ve discovered is that hardly any work needs to go into a study for a productive, established group. It seems to me the real litmus test is a new group, where everybody is still shy, fake, etc., etc.
That would be a fascinating gig. In my little dabblings with creating curricula for our church’s internal use, I’ve walked this fine line between wanting simply to enhance the ideas in the source (book, whatever) and wanting to ask questions which probe whether or not the source might have some incomplete ideas, half-truths, distortions, whatever. I guess this is some of the reason it’s a good thing your original books were quite good. It eliminates some of this.
Micah, that is so cool. I’d love to see/use your (plural) books one day.
I hope ya’ll are doing well.
:)
Thanks all!
Scott–
It’s so weird exactly how much of a zero-sum game my creative energy is. Bizarre. Still learning about myself at 27 . . . .
Jeff–
It would feel pretty wrong if a group’s cohesion and functionality was dependent on some material or other. I run up against the same issues of wanting to teach the text but also improve it in places when I’m dealing with philosophical texts.
What’s nice about Wide Open Spaces and The Organic God is that they’re both working at the frontiers of my theology, so even when I wondered whether there might not be something more that was being missed, I couldn’t see it confidently enough for myself to call out the authors. That was nice, because I could ask questions then, rather than criticize or whatever. Which was what I was supposed to be doing anyway.
Amanda–
Thanks :-D We are. And we just watched Chamber of Secrets the other night and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. So I haven’t completely gone off the deep end *grin*
Evidently the study guides are going to be released as supplements to The Relevant Leader magazine (or something). Hopefully they’ll send us some copies, and then we can show them to y’all and critique the graphic design *grin* Relevant does great graphic design work, but I’ll always be partial to Tim :-D
I feel like I ought to justify myself a little. You’re right, Micah. It would be wrong if a group’s cohesion depended on materials… It’s all about relationships, if it’s going to work.
But those relationships don’t materialize out of thin air. Every group is new at some point. And when relationships are non-existent or superficial, it’s been my experience that the materials are critical. They can either bond the group or stunt it’s growth.
The way we do “do” small groups is to give them 2 years before we expect them to split so that the offspring groups can bring in new members. We’ve spent a lot of time agonizing over this, I see the benefits of the alternatives but I’m convinced this is the best way to balance “insiders” need for substantial relationship with our call to make disciples. One ramifacation of this strategy is that we end up with quite a lot of these new groups navigating formation sorts-of issues.
Congratulations. I’m glad that you were able to complete the study guides and that you feel good about the results.
How does one get to write study guides? I would really enjoy doing so. I’ve seen some good ones and some not-so-good ones, and I believe I could write a good one.
[...] bookmarks tagged prideful On Writing Study Guides saved by 10 others jessicaf89 bookmarked on 01/01/08 | [...]